It should have come as no great surprise for Chris Christie that he and his associates would be ousted last week from U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet and transition team.
After all, it was Christie who, in 2005, prosecuted and sentenced Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner’s father, Charles Kushner, to two years of prison on 18 counts of tax evasion, making illegal campaign contributions and witness tampering when the former was U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey.
And while the younger Kushner may not be a blood relative of Trump’s, he is the husband of the president-elect’s favorite daughter and father to three of his grandchildren.
Moreover, Trump has made it no secret that he values the advice and input of Kushner, and having a walking-talking (for that matter, very vocal) reminder of one of the most unsavory chapters in the newspaper publisher and real estate developer’s life involved in the daily dealings of the White House and the prelude period up to the swear-in was only going to cause awkwardness and discomfort.
Among the collateral-damage casualties of the bad-blood fallout were former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, who had been tapped by Christie to lead national security planning.
Kushner’s vendetta against the New Jersey governor, who staked his later political career as being tough-on-crime, runs deep.
Jared likewise blames Christie for maintaining a BFF friendship with Charles’ brother, Murray Kushner, who was instrumental in his sibling’s incarceration and who reportedly engaged in the same sort of activities that got Charles busted.
Inside sources have said that it was Kushner who blocked Christie from becoming Trump’s running mate during the election campaign.
Jared Kushner never fully accepted his father’s guilt, insisting that he had been railroaded by a stilted legal system with a double-standard and which did not take into account the “nuanced nature” of white-collar dealings.
“My father made a mistake and he paid a big price for it, but he’s my father,” Jared Kushner was quoted as saying in a Real Deal Magazine interview in 2013.
Now, it is Christie who is paying the price.
Thérèse Margolis can be reached at [email protected].
